A 16-year-old boy accused of murdering Ipswich teenager Tavis Spencer-Aitkens has claimed he was in a flat weighing out drugs when the fatal stabbing took place.

Giving evidence at Ipswich Crown, the youngest of six defendants accused of murdering 17-year-old Tavis said he’d been given a lift in a delivery van from Alderman Park to Iris Close to collect drugs which he planned to sell.

The 16-year-old, who has admitted selling crack cocaine and heroin, said he had gone into a “drug house” shortly after the van arrived in Iris Close at 4.30pm and had stayed there weighing out drugs until 6pm, when he was given a lift in a car to Handford Road.

He denied being in the delivery van when it left Iris Close and claimed he hadn’t been in it when it went to Packard Avenue in the Nacton part of Ipswich where Tavis was stabbed 15 times at around 4.50pm.

The 16-year-old, who said he was a former member of the J-Block gang from the Jubilee Park area of Ipswich, claimed he’d been dropped off near his co-defendant Isaac Calver’s home in Firmin Close and had changed into a fresh set of clothes.

He and Calver were walking to a friend’s house in Great Gipping Street when they were joined by 23-year-old Aristote Yenge.

While they were in Great Gipping Street he claimed they were told that Tavis had been killed and he had been shocked.

He said he was concerned when he was told about the killing because if something happened in the Nacton area of the town J-Block got blamed for it.

The 16-year-old, who cannot be identified because of his age, Yenge, 23, of Spring Road, Ipswich, Adebayo Amusa, 20, of Sovereign Road, Barking, Callum Plaats, 23, of Ipswich, Isaac Calver, 19, of Firmin Close, Ipswich, and Leon Glasgow, 42, of no fixed address, all deny murdering Tavis, of Pownall Road, Ipswich, in Packard Avenue, Ipswich, on June 2 last year.

During his evidence the 16-year-old said he’d been in Ipswich town centre with Yenge at about 2pm on June 2 when he saw two men approaching them looking aggressive.

He claimed one of them accused him of “trying to get with” his girlfriend the previous evening and he had denied it.

However, he claimed the man called him a liar and he and Yenge went into Lush followed by the other two men who were telling them to go back outside.

The 16-year-old said the incident was broken up by police and he and Yenge then went to a friend’s flat in Great Gipping Street.

Questioned by his barrister Paul Bentley QC he denied that having been “humiliated” by members of a rival gang in the town centre he had started making a series of telephone calls at the flat to “round up people to form a group to carry out an attack”.

It has been alleged the attack on Tavis was the result of rivalry between the “J-Block” group, which took its name from Jubilee Park area where they lived, and the “Neno” group who came from the Nacton area of Ipswich, for what “J-Block” perceived to be a loss of respect following a row between the 16-year-old defendant and Yenge and two of Tavis’s friends earlier on the day in question.

The trial continues.